


The Wooing of Six

by Sp00py



Category: Little Nightmares (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Memory Loss, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, canon-typical children dying, spoilers for LN2, thin man is a pure bean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29324364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sp00py/pseuds/Sp00py
Summary: Mono realizes how important Six is to him.
Relationships: Mono & Six (Little Nightmares), Mono/Six (Little Nightmares)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 449





	The Wooing of Six

**Author's Note:**

> I know _some_ of how LN2 ends but I don't know all, nor do I know anything about the actual sequences of events. So I took many liberties, because I do what I want. Also if u wanna talk LN and LN2, pls feel free to join <https://discord.gg/XVJXUFj49f>

Mono sat in the chair, scanning monitor after monitor embedded in the walls. A child here, another there, flitting like little birds. Trying to survive. So many failing. He raised his thin hand and flicked his fingers. The images changed. More children. More dead. More. More. Some he snatched away, absorbed into the transmission, never to fear age or hunger or death again, but there were so, so many.

His hand lifted once more to search the world for children in need of rescue, but this time he hesitated. In a world so devoid of color, something bright had flashed across a screen. He reached out to all the television sets in that area, and eye after eye opened, revealing the world outside from a dozen of angles.

A creature, hunched and limber, crawled through ruins and wires, coat a dingy, faded yellow that stirred equally faded memories. A tiny figure ran before her. Ah, she was hunting. Interesting.

Mono leaned forward and propped his chin in his palm, gaze riveted to the drama unfolding before him. The child, of course, didn’t stand a chance. Once, that would have made him sad, but he could only save so many, and death was a constant accompaniment these days. Such was the way of the world.

But who was this chasing them? Mono honed in on screen after screen where she ran close to a set, taking in every detail he could. Long, black hair matted with grease and full of snarls. Fingers like claws, digging furrows in dirt and cement alike. And that  _ yellow _ . Garish, gaudy. Like a spider screaming a warning of venom and danger. It felt… comforting? If that was the right word. Familiar and warm.

As the creature descended upon her prey, swooping the child up in one hand and bracing herself from her abrupt stop with the other, Mono stood and approached a monitor showing the scene at a slight distance and pressed his hand to it.

He stepped out into the rubble of the city, eyes aching from the brightness of the world. It was still dark and grey, but vastly different from Mono’s home, saturated and still, with no flicker of static or warping walls. The creature was easy to find amidst all the dullness, ripping off the child’s arm with a practiced ease as their scream cut through the air.

Mono kept his distance, but made his presence known. He was curious, not stupid, after all. She froze, black eyes locking onto his, child sobbing brokenly in her grip. He held his hands up peaceably, making a point of sitting slowly on a crumbling wall and crossing his legs.

After some contemplation, during which the child’s cries grew weaker and weaker, the creature ignored Mono and returned to her meal. They were gone in two swift but bloody bites.

While he’d never taken pleasure in watching children die, and would much rather take them away to his realm, Mono could admit to himself that there was a certain fondness in watching the creature feed. She sat back on her short, crooked legs and wiped her forearm across her mouth, smearing blood.

Who was she? Did Mono know her? He felt in his soul he did, and it made him want to reach out to the creature. To take her hand and learn what he’d forgotten. But that would be foolhardy and likely wind up with him dead.

Whether she shared these thoughts or not, the creature soon turned and left, deeming him either unimportant or not a threat. Mono lingered a little longer, tugging gently on that thread of memory, but nothing came of it, and he was afraid of it unravelling into nothing. There were other ways to recall one’s own past.

He returned to the static, but continued his observations through the screens.

The creature was simple: she ate, she slept, she prowled the broken city. Children seemed her preferred meal, but Mono had seen her go after other adults and always, easily, win. He felt a little flattered that she’d not attacked him on sight. Perhaps she had felt that same something he had.

And as he watched, he combed through memories on more monitors, looking for any sign of the creature in his own mind. A sadness here, a longing there, like a forgotten dream he followed a trail of breadcrumbs back, back, back into his childhood.

Ah, there she was. So tiny, but such a monster already. Mono smiled, the swelling in his heart at the sight of his friend almost painful. His fingers traced the frozen image of a little girl in a raincoat, hand in hand with a silly boy who thought he knew everything. How could he have forgotten Six?

She’d grown up so lovely, feral and bloodthirsty. Now that he remembered, Mono was sad for the times they’d missed. They’d been so young when she let him fall. Time passed, tangled, tumbled over itself until there was suddenly years between them. The static-y world inside the TVs ate away at a person, like little mice chewing his memories all up, and Mono had been in here for a very, very long time.

Would Six have let him go, if she’d known he wouldn’t die? Or would she have ripped his throat out herself, as she’d done with other children?

Mono turned his attention to the present day Six. She slept on a bed rotted away by time and rain, in the cold and in the dark, her great shape curled in on itself in innocent slumber. He could only just see her, off-center from a skewed television set, most of his view full of scribbled drawings, old bones, and torn clothes. As an adult, the world made so much more sense than it had to him as a child -- to either of them, he was sure. He wouldn’t hold the betrayals of childhood against her.

She seemed as unaware of him as he was of her, when he first saw her, but -- there, on the wall. A familiar paper bag atop a stick figure body, drawn by her. She did remember, at least once upon a time. Now, Mono wasn’t so sure. Perhaps she’d linger over that picture as she went about her day, wondering who that boy was and what he meant to her. Wistfully, he liked to think so.

Mono would go to her again, he decided. The children he whisks away could wait; the world could wait. But he didn’t want to go empty-handed. He steepled his fingers in thought, drumming the tips together. What sort of gift would a monster like Six want?

_ Let’s see, let’s see… Ah, of course. _

  
  
  
  


The first time he came in full knowledge of who Six was, he got her attention and carefully deposited a music box in plain sight. Then he left, and observed through the TVs.

She was suspicious at first, as any right-thinking adult would be, but curiosity won over. Mono could only hope that he’d gotten the tune close enough to right. He was no toy maker, but he understood the principles of tines and bumps, playing out a lullaby in a metal tin. Mono had a collection of failed attempts scattered around his chair, and nicks and cuts aplenty, that he had waited to heal before daring to approach Six again. It had taken trial and error and memories on loop until he felt he had a decent enough approximation. If he was honest, Mono was pretty proud of the final result.

So it was that he watched with bated breath as she approached. Six was, despite her animalistic ways, clever. She’d figure out how to work it.

Mono delighted in watching her caress the metal he’d clumsily beaten into shape, examining the music box for any traps. When it passed her inspection, she turned the crank, and the first few notes of an almost familiar song rang out. Mono couldn’t hear through the screen, but he had tested it himself, and could see her rear back in response to the tinkling sounds. She knocked the music box a little, and when it neither harmed her nor made any more noise, her posture relaxed.

Soon Six was cranking more enthusiastically. Not as hard as she could, likely knowing the delicate nature of the toy, but with no inhibition. A lopsided smile blossomed on her blood-smeared face, and Mono leaned forward to commit it to memory before she took the music box and loped away to her den.

She was his first real friend, and, he felt sure, he had been hers. Six had never struck him as the sort to make friends easily (probably on account of her eating them, Mono thought wryly). He missed her, and part of that was a new longing, but so much was tempered by the old, original sorrow of her leaving him, of his isolation. Of the years ticking by unheeded, with no hint of her return or even if she still thought of him, until he forgot who he was waiting for.

  
  


The gifts after the music box were simple in nature, but Six didn’t seem inclined toward pomp. A box of large crayons and paper, which she immediately took to and began scribbling. Fresh bedding for her lair, several times over, until she had created quite the nest to sink into. A child, once, though Mono couldn’t bring himself to do it any more than that. Though he loved how she lit up during the hunt, he still wanted to  _ save  _ them, to squirrel them away in the cozy darkness of the TVs. It felt like a betrayal to his younger self, someone he didn’t particularly care about but worried  _ Six  _ might still care for. So he moved on to more morally acceptable gifts.

Unlike the first gift, Mono stayed for these. At a distance, at first, but creeping ever closer. A slow process, but one he was willing to indulge. Friendships did not simply spring into existence in a second, no matter how they once knew each other. It took time to cultivate. Six had initially been wary, too, but sooner than he could have hoped, she allowed him almost within two yards of her.

Mono was at war with himself every time he visited Six, unsure if he was courting a stranger, or rekindling an old friendship. Some days, it seemed the former, others, the latter. The thought that she truly didn’t know who he was ached and made him want to abandon this entire venture. He didn’t want a ghost. He wanted Six.  _ His _ Six, who slayed adult and child alike. Who tore flesh from bone and loved a dinky little music box.

That she sometimes brought it out to play while he was there tempted him toward thinking she remembered. It was out of tune and uneven of beat, made by someone who didn’t quite know what he was doing, but the sounds were reminiscent enough of their childhood. He’d never destroy this one, though.

Her walls slowly began to fill with drawings of paper bags and bullies and Nomes and eyes. Mono let himself have hope. And he continued to visit.

As they grew more comfortable in each others’ presence, Six began to gift things back to Mono. Never handed to him, but chucked at him with surprising precision and more than a few bumps and bruises as a result, or set down meaningfully before skittering a safe distance away.

Things like an interesting looking rock, a key, a picture of a Nome spattered with the blood of one of her meals began to accumulate in his home. Then there’d been the half-eaten child still warm and steaming in the cool morning air. Mono… hadn’t really been sure how to handle that being thrown into his lap, and winced thinking he’d offended her scrambling to get it off of him, to wipe away the vivid splashes of blood. Luckily, she seemed to take his disgust in stride, and offered instead the bunny-ear antennae off a TV, taking the meal for herself.

Child aside, they were nothing he truly needed or wanted, but things he wound up loving simply because they were from Six. The control room from where he watched the world slowly began to fill with trash too precious to part with, and Mono became more confident that she was truly the Six he remembered. Any niggling doubts were shoved down deep inside, because he  _ needed _ to believe. He became desperate for these visits, every time like a man dying of thirst, thinking maybe this time, or _this_ time, he'll finally get to drink.

Today, she flipped through an old magazine he’d found, looking intently at the pictures of dogs and cats and advertisements for veterinary care. He doubted she ever bothered to learn to read in the time after leaving him, but she seemed to enjoy the images and the turning of the pages. Mono was pleased at how easy reading her expressions and body language returned to him, until Six was once again an open book. She’d never hidden her thoughts as a child, and that, especially, seemed to remain the same.

They were on the edge of her territory, which was also the edge of the world. Only ocean extended beyond the cliffside, with a thin plume of smoke rising from something past the curve of the horizon.

Mono let his long legs dangle over the ledge, pant legs teased by the salty sprays, hat on his lap with one hand protectively placed upon it. He could watch Six for days (and often did, from the TVs), but she disliked being stared at for too long. Mono settled for simply enjoying her company somewhere behind him, shuffling paper, shifting her large mass on the gravel of pulverized buildings.

It had been so long since he’d left the TVs before Six, and all his color had washed away into the monochrome of the transmission. Mono relished the feel of weak sunlight on his skin, the wind raising gooseflesh. This alone he saw as a gift from Six, because without her he might never have returned to this realm. Because of her, when he was young and hurt and lacked understanding, he hadn’t even  _ wanted _ to. For this, too, he was grateful to Six. Even if she never recalled exactly who he was, and who they were together, Mono could accept her, he thought. Mono could love this.

So lost in his thoughts, Mono hadn’t even realized Six had approached (he tried not to think of her shoving him off the cliff. Unlike inside the TVs, that fall  _ would _ kill him) until she stood a short distance behind him, her scent announcing her presence. She forever permeated the air with a stink of rot and mildew, a sourness so uniquely hers that Mono had come to love it.

He turned a little to gaze up at her, one eyebrow quirked in question. She looked back with a neutral expression, black eyes glittering behind the veil of her hair. Sometimes, she was such an enigma, one that Mono wanted to puzzle out. What game was she playing today?

Six held out her hand.

Mono looked at those long, gnarled fingers stained with dirt and blood, heart in his throat.  _ She _ was initiating contact now.  _ She _ was choosing to close that distance. When he lifted his gaze again to her face, hoping but afraid to truly believe this was happening, he saw the child she was. Mono felt once more like the child he had been.

He slipped his trembling hand into hers, and let her pull him to his feet, unlike all those years ago.

Together, they left the cliff.


End file.
